American Schools Overseas Redouble Security Efforts

For teachers and administrators at schools serving Americans
overseas, the outbreak of war last week brought a redoubling of efforts
to secure the safety of their students.

Even in countries that are far removed from the Persian Gulf
conflict, officials at U.S. Department of Defense schools and private
international schools worried that any installation identified as
American could become the target of a terrorist act.

Others expressed concern that American high-school students
traveling abroad could also see a heightened risk of terrorism.

American educators and students in Saudi Arabia and Israel,
meanwhile, faced being within range of a direct Iraqi attack--a danger
that was underscored late last week by the Iraqi missile attacks on Tel
Aviv, Haifa, and other areas.

The Walworth Barbour American International School near Tel Aviv had
closed beginning Jan. 15, the day of the United Nations deadline for
Iraq to leave Kuwait, as did Israeli schools.

Enrollment at the American school, which had increased to 480 this
past fall, declined considerably after Christmas, the school's
superintendent, Forrest A. Broman, said in a telephone interview just
hours before the start of the war.

Daryle Russell, superintendent of the Saudi Arabian International
School in Riyadh, gave an indication of the vigilance of American
school officials in the region in an interview the day after the first
U.S. air attack on Iraq on Jan. 16.

"Tonight, we are going to get together and watch the skies," he
said.

Mr. Russell said he had received a phone call early that morning
from his son in Dhahran, where U.S. airplanes were taking off on their
way to strike Iraq.

"He said, 'Planes are at the end of the runway and it looks like
something is about to happen,"' said Mr. Russell, whose son teaches at
the Dhahran Academy there, another school serving dependents of
diplomats and international businessmen stationed overseas, including
many Americans.

Despite the initiation of war and the exodus of many families from
the region, Mr. Russell said his school in the Saudi Arabian capital
would probably remain open in the days and weeks ahead.

Total enrollment at the school was about 1,500 before Christmas, but
attendance had declined to 640 students one day last week.

"Many parents are keeping their children at home," Mr. Russell said.
"Our decision is to keep school in session regardless of the attendance
that we have, as long as we can secure their safety."

The only Department of Defense Dependents' Schools in or near the
Middle East were closed last week even before U.S. and allied forces
began their attack on Iraq. They were the DOD schools on Bahrain, a
tiny emirate off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, and at
Incerlik Air Base in Turkey, a joint U.S.-Turkish installation.

But the Defense Department also stepped up security for its approximately
200 schools throughout Europe.

"The European-theater offices have notified schools in the last two
weeks of the need to increase the security awareness of students and
parents," said William Hyder, chief of the transportation, safety, and
security branch of the Defense Department schools.

"Military-community commanders are responsible for upgrading the
physical security of the buildings and the surrounding area," he added.
"Many of our schools are located in housing areas, which are normally
open to the public. At times like these, guards are posted."

Melba Brown, an assistant principal at Nuernberg Elementary School
in Germany said last week that school buses there, which are
commercially operated, are no long permitted to pick up students in the
areas where they live. The buses wait for students outside the housing
area, she said, then drive in a caravan sandwiched between jeeps and
military police from nearby Monteith Army Base.

Teachers and parents visiting the school, which is on base, must
present three identifications and have their cars searched.

Even so, Ms. Brown said, only 300 of the 1,100 children enrolled in
the K-4 school came to class last Thursday.

"I know some of the kids were a little concerned about security,"
she said.

The increased security at American institutions abroad comes after
weeks of speculation that terrorist groups aligned with Iraq might be
prepared to strike targets associated with the U.S.-led coalition
opposing that country.

According to a report last week in The Washington Post, executives
and security officials of top U.S. defense contractors and other large
corporations recently held a closed-door "terrorism roundtable," where
they concluded that prime targets for terrorism included U.S.
government facilities, private American schools, and other American
installations in Europe, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and
other areas.

"The thought is repugnant, but I agree with the assessment" that
schools overseas could be such a target, Robert H. Kupperman, senior
adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington and an expert on terrorism, said in an interview last
week.

"The likelihood of terrorism is great," he said. "The targets will
be European and Middle Eastern at first, particularly Americans
abroad."

In Athens, the American Community School closed for several days
beginning Jan. 17. Also, security was tightened at the American School
of London.

The threat was so real to the headmaster of another such school in a
major Western European city that he pleaded that it not be mentioned in
print.

"We are rather unknown in this city and I would like to keep it that
way," the headmaster said.

Meanwhile, in a number of Middle Eastern and neighboring countries
with large Moslem populations, the State Department has evacuated some
of its personnel, in part out of a fear that pro-Iraq demonstrations
could materialize and pose a security threat.

These include countries such as Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, and
Pakistan.

Several American-curriculum schools--including those in Algiers,
Algeria; Khartoum, Sudan; and Karachi, Pakistan--have closed for up to
two weeks in light of the Gulf conflict.

In Saudi Arabia, even after the war began, the U.S. Embassy was
maintaining that it was safe for American citizens to remain in the
country.

"We continue to be guided by the advice of the U.S. State
Department, and their advice is that they do not see the need for an
evacuation," said William Tracy, a spokesman for Aramco Services
Company in Houston, the U.S. affiliate of Saudi Aramco, the giant
state-owned oil company that employs many American workers, including
teachers for the company-run schools in and around Dhahran.

"Most of the people we have talked to are feeling more calm and
comfortable now than before [Operation Desert Storm began], because in
their opinion, the U.S. military is being effective," he said.

Concern about the safety of American students has also affected some
education-related travel or exchanges both overseas and at home.

Based on a Jan. 13 State Department advisory telling all Americans
to leave Israel, the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program,
based in Miami, the next day evacuated the 10 students it had there,
according to Yisroel Cohen, the program's chief executive officer.

The students, who had been scheduled to leave Israel Jan. 22,
completed seven weeks of the eight-week academic program near Tel
Aviv.

Program officials are canceling the February session, for which
students would have departed Jan. 30, Mr. Cohen said last week. He said
he would resume the program as soon as the State Department lifted its
advisory.

The Gulf crisis has had a drastic impact on his program's
enrollment, Mr. Cohen said. Enrollment had fallen steadily since Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait Aug. 2. The June 1990 session had 238 students, he
said, while the September one had just 61. Eighty-six students were
originally scheduled for the November program, which ended up with just
the 10 who were later evacuated.

Exchange programs with Turkey, a U.S. ally that borders Iraq, have
also raised worries among some parents and local American sponsors.

But officials of AFS Intercultural Programs and Rotary
International's youth-exchange programs, which both have students in
Turkey, said late last week that they did not believe them to be in
danger.

Scott D. Ramey, a spokesman for AFS, said his organization decided
Jan. 17 not to evacuate its 26 students there, 17 of whom are American,
after consulting with the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy, and
the Turkish government.

While security officials and AFS believe the students are safer if
they do not try to leave, he added, AFS policy is to honor any requests
for an early departure.

Rotary International, which has 20 to 30 American students in
Turkey, also does not plan an evacuation, but is advising its students
there to heed a U.S. Embassy request to register with the embassy,
according to Mim Neal, Rotary's media-relations manager. Such action
would enable the embassy to keep track of American citizens if an
evacuation became necessary, Ms. Neal said.

AFS students had registered with the embassy on their entry into the
country, Mr. Ramey said.

Both the AFS and Rotary students arrived in Turkey in July for
one-year stays, officials of the groups said.

In a security briefing Jan. 16 in Turkey, the AFS students were told
they were safest with their host families and were cautioned not to
raise their visibility by participating in political demonstrations,
according to Mr. Ramey.

While Rotary had been told Jan. 15 that air travel for Americans out
of Turkey was difficult because of reduced commercial service, it did
not believe any of its students wanted to leave.

"As far as we know there isn't mass panic among them," Ms. Neal
said. Land travel is still open, she added.

But parents and U.S. Rotary Clubs that sponsored the students have
been concerned about the situation, she acknowledged.

Ms. Neal said Rotary was expecting the Persian Gulf war to prompt
parents or sponsoring clubs to pull students from foreign exchanges
already arranged, but added that she could not predict which ones might
be affected.

AFS last week received calls from parents concerned about children
participating in exchange programs throughout Europe. "We've had calls
from parents of a kid in Switzerland who want [the student] out," Mr.
Ramey said.

He said once parents are reassured about his organization's
diplomatic connections and evacuation experience, they often withdraw
the request. But he said he foresees the possibility that parents will
want to cut short even those exchanges in Western Europe.

Youth for Understanding, an international student-exchange group
based in Washington, does not have high-school students in or near the
Middle East, and said last week it had no plans to alter its
programs.

"Obviously we will be very closely monitoring all State Department
advisories," she said.

In this country, meanwhile, trips to the nation's capital were
points of anxiety for Washington-area school officials, both because of
the threat of terrorism and potentially volatile political
demonstrations.

John A. Murphy, superintendent of schools in Prince George's County,
Md., a Washington suburb, last week canceled all field trips into the
capital until further notice. The move was a "precaution," said Bonnie
S. Jenkins, director of public affairs for the Maryland district.

She said she did not know if such trips had been planned by any of
Prince George's 171 schools but added that such plans would have been
likely because of the district's proximity of the capital.

Ms. Jenkins had never heard of a similar order in her 17 years with
the county's schools.

In the Virginia suburbs of Washington, another school district
suspended trips for Jan. 15 only, the day of the United Nations
deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The decision was made
because of several political demonstrations slated for that day, said
Dolores Bohen, an assistant superintendent for the Fairfax County
school district.

She said the decision was "a typical thing for us" because the
district often curtails trips for safety-related reasons.

She did not know if any of the district's 200 schools had any field
trips scheduled for that day.

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